Gettysburg to Appomattox

Yet none of the Confederate victories was decisive. The federal
government simply mustered new armies and tried again. Believing
that the North's crushing defeat at Chancellorsville gave him his
chance, Lee struck northward into Pennsylvania, in July 1863,
almost
reaching the state capital at Harrisburg. A strong Union force
intercepted Lee's march at Gettysburg, where, in a titanic
three-day battle
-- the largest of the Civil War -- the Confederates made a
valiant
effort to break the Union lines. They failed, and Lee's veterans,
after crippling losses, fell back to the Potomac.

More than 3,000 Union soldiers and almost 4,000 Confederates died
at Gettysburg; wounded and missing totaled more than 20,000 on
each
side. On November 19, 1863, Lincoln dedicated a new national
cemetery
at Gettysburg with perhaps the most famous address in U.S.
history.
He concluded his brief remarks with these words:

...we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in
vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of
freedom
-- and that government of the people, by the people, for the
people, shall not perish from the earth.

On the
Mississippi, Union control was blocked at Vicksburg, where the
Confederates had strongly fortified themselves on
bluffs too high for naval attack. By early 1863 Grant began to
move below
and around Vicksburg, subjecting the position to a six-week
siege. On
July 4, he captured the town, together with the strongest
Confederate
Army in the West. The river was now entirely in Union hands. The
Confederacy was broken in two, and it became almost impossible to
bring supplies from Texas and Arkansas.

The Northern victories at Vicksburg and Gettysburg in July 1863
marked the turning point of the war, although the bloodshed
continued unabated for more than a year-and-a-half.

Lincoln brought Grant east and made him commander-in-chief of all
Union forces. In May 1864 Grant advanced deep into Virginia and
met Lee's Confederate Army in the three-day Battle of the
Wilderness. Losses on both sides were heavy, but unlike other
Union
commanders, Grant refused to retreat. Instead, he attempted to
outflank Lee, stretching the Confederate lines and pounding away
with artillery
and infantry attacks. "I propose to fight it out along this line
if
it takes all summer," the Union commander said at Spotsylvania,
during five days of bloody trench warfare that largely
characterized
fighting on the eastern front for almost a year.

In the West, Union forces gained control of Tennessee in the fall
of 1863 with victories at Chattanooga and nearby Lookout
Mountain, opening the way for General William T. Sherman to
invade Georgia. Sherman outmaneuvered several smaller Confederate
armies,
occupied the state capital of Atlanta, then marched to the
Atlantic coast, systematically destroying railroads, factories,
warehouses and
other facilities in his path. His men, cut off from their normal
supply lines, ravaged the countryside for food. From the coast,
Sherman marched northward, and by February 1865, he had taken
Charleston, South Carolina, where the first shots of the Civil
War had been
fired. Sherman, more than any other Union general, understood
that
destroying the will and morale of the South was as important as
defeating
its armies.

Grant, meanwhile, lay siege to Petersburg, Virginia, for nine
months, before Lee, in March 1865, abandoned both Petersburg and
the Confederate capital of Richmond in an attempt to retreat
south.
But it was too late, and on April 9, 1865, surrounded by huge
Union
armies, Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Courthouse.
Although
scattered fighting continued elsewhere for several months, the
Civil War
was over.

The terms of surrender at Appomattox were magnanimous, and on his
return from his meeting with Lee, Grant quieted the noisy
demonstrations of his soldiers by reminding them: "The rebels are
our countrymen again." The war for Southern independence had
become
the "lost cause," whose hero, Robert E. Lee, had won wide
admiration through the brilliance of his leadership and his
greatness in
defeat.